How To Play Triads On Guitar – The Ultimate Guide

This is gonna be awesome!

Here you’ll get the most comprehensive guide on how-to play triads for guitar.

Right now this post is not finished. It’s work in progress!

So come back and check it from time to time to get the updated version until it’s complete,

so you can learn every important triad that you might need in your guitar life.

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How To Practice Triads On Guitar

The Descending Fifths Sequence

The notes of a descending fifths sequence are:

C F B E A D G C

The chords of the descending fifths sequence are

C F Bdim. Em Am Dm G C

Which translates to the following formula

I IV VII III VI II V I

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Descending Fifths Sequence: Triad Walk Exercise

Exercise No. 2.1: Descending One Octave From Root Position

Exercise No. 2.2: Descending One Octave From 1st Inversion

Exercise No. 2.3: Descending Two Octaves From 2nd Inversion

Exercise No. 2.4: Descending Two Octaves From Root Position

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Exercise No. 3.1: Ascending & Descending With Inversions On High E, B & G String

Exercise No. 3.2: Ascending & Descending With Inversions On B, G & D String

Exercise No. 3.3: Ascending & Descending With Inversions On G, D & A String

Exercise No. 3.4: Ascending & Descending With Inversions On D, A & Low E String

How Play Triads On Guitar

A-Minor Triads On Guitar

Once you’ve mastered all the triads here, make sure that you expand your knowledge! Use the triads here as a solid basis for your chord knowledge! Take look at the standard A-Minor chord shapes and see how they are basically made of the triads that you’ve learned here.

A-Diminished Triads On Guitar

The diminished triad is played relatively rarely as a chord on more than 3 strings. It’s just not that practical from a players perspective. It’s often a good idea to use the half-diminished seventh chord instead (m7b5). You can learn 11 Ways To Play The Am7b5 Chord chord here.

A-Major Triads On Guitar

Also, take a look at the A-Major chords and notice the connection between the triads and the typical standards chord shapes.

A-Augmented Triads On Guitar

This is really an easy one.

For the augmented triad there is only one shape for each set of three strings.

Here you can easily shift the same shape a major third up on the fretboard to play the inversions.

More good news: The shape on the g d & a strings is the very same shape as on the a d & low e string.

In other words, you

only need to learn three shapes to play the augmented triad on the entire fretboard.

Isn’t this awesome?

D-Minor Triads On Guitar

Take look at the standard D-Minor chord shapes and see how they are basically are made of the triads that you’ve learned here.

E-Major Triads On Guitar

Take look at the standard E-Major chord shapes and see how they are basically are made of the triads that you’ve learned here.

C-Major Triads On Guitar